


Nightmares

by BardicLesbian



Category: Curse of Strahd - Fandom, Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Nightmares, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 23:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15351405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardicLesbian/pseuds/BardicLesbian
Summary: Ireena's nightmares are always about him.





	Nightmares

You’ve always had them. Even before you can remember you still feel like you’ve had them. They are nightmares, you know that much, but they are different. It sounds silly to place importance on them, to call them anything more than what they are. Ismark would get nightmares too as a boy, everyone does. You’re not sure they ever really stop, even when people grow older. But yours are different....

Your eyes shoot open, jaw locked into a scream that never comes. The room is dark and silent, and it takes you a moment to get your bearings, to understand where and who you are. A small room, lined with old bricks. A church. Vallaki. 

Slowly a sense of place comes back to you, a sense of self. Your brother is sleeping in another cot, and you can feel now that your own is drenched in sweat as if you broke from a fever in your sleep. You are shaking still, bones aching like being crushed, fingers digging white knuckled into the bed. It takes a while to come out of this, you know all you can do is wait, let your body realize where it is even as your mind still feels hazy.

He was here again. Not in person, so you suppose you still have some blessings to count. He was here and you were running too slowly. You are never fast enough to outrun him. There is still the smell of iron in your nose, enough to gag on, enough to fill your lungs and drown you. The air is thick with it and your feet wade through the sludge as bile rises in your throat. He is dead, who ever he is, and he is dead too, the other one you can’t name even as you scream for him. And you are dead too, you think, and so is everyone and everything.

You feel his hands on you, only for a second, but it is enough. Enough to make you want to tear your skin free from your bones. If he likes this body so much he can take it, but only after you’ve ripped it apart with your bare hands, destroyed all the beauty you never asked for. You will be blood and sinew and bones before he has you.

But he doesn’t get the chance, because soon you find yourself falling. You wish you could see his face, see shock, see anger, see that you affected him in any way. Because that means you’ve won. But you can’t see, your hair is in your face like a veil, tangled with dirt and leaves and blood like a mad woman. And maybe that is what you are. It’s not like you can cry anymore. Every time the tears bubble up they turn to steam, and you are nothing but rage as you hit the ground hard enough to shatter into dust. He deserves nothing, not even your broken corpse.

But you are not there, you are here, in the back room of a church. And you are alive and breathing. And you are crying in the dark and you hate yourself for it as you pull your knees to your chest like a child. And you will stay like this until the grey light of morning peaks through the window and by then the tears will be dry. And you will greet your brother like nothing happened, and you will greet all of them this way. And you will prepare for a feast you are too sick to eat from and talk like you aren’t too numb to feel. And you will be okay to spite him even if you’ve already lost.


End file.
